Modern medicine requires the frequent dosage of drugs and vitamins in the form of pills, tablets, liquid, and capsules on regimented intervals. Keeping track of the amount (i.e. doses) and time of a dose is easy for a trained professional; however, the responsibility of taking the medication often falls to the individual or patients. For many patients, such as those with disabilities or conditions that inhibit cognitive functions, taking medicine at specific times and amounts is a daunting task and this often leads to these treatments not being taken or at best, administered infrequently or at the wrong time.
There are many medicines that need to be taken at specific times or at specific intervals. These schedules can last for several weeks, months, or years, and may require several doses a day at regimented times. Solutions exist in order for patients to better track their treatment. Pill dispensers (also true from others include but not limited to liquid drug bottle or dispenser etc) help to alleviate this problem with dividers which a patient can separate their treatments into specific days and with larger containers, into time of the day. The container has a different opening for each day of the week and the patient fills their pills for each day in the containers. This process can be cumbersome, and requires the patient to fill the container weekly, remember the times when their medication is to be taken and if it needs to be administered several times a day at different time of the day. To manage their health, a patient may have several different containers filled with medications (i.e. drugs) and ready to take in each day for specific period of time. For treatments taken once/multiple times a day, such dispensers are adequate. However, when treatment varies from one to another and/or several times single or multiple medications are to be taken, then problems occur. These problems get worse for the cases of persons with ages and or brain related disease, as the cognitive ability gets affected.
Traditional bottles and dispensers have not helped patents take their medication on time. At best, the current solutions allow for a patient to organize their treatment. With these dispensers, patients often forget to take their medication or are delinquent in taking their medication. This can lead to medicine losing its effectiveness and/or patients taking multiple doses at the same time in order to make up for a missed dose. Each habit can put the patient's health in jeopardy and can lead to severe consequences.
Thus, there is a need for a pill bottle that can be programmed specifically for the dispensing needs of that medication, vitamin, or supplement, which displays the time the pill should be taken, but also tracks when the pills are taken, and indicates when the pills need to be refilled. It is more reliable for the container to remind the patient when their medication is to be taken than have the patent go to pre-filled daily containers. Such a system will result in the more reliable dispensing of medication, less missed doses and overall better patient health.